Calendar Makeover

Entries for the cartridge give-away is now closed. While we're waiting for time to pass before I announce the winner on Saturday at 10am PST, let me show you what I did on Friday. 

We have a whiteboard magnetic calendar in the craft room and boy, am I tired of writing the dates on it every month. October being Halloween Month, I thought I would do something different. I gave the calendar a makeover.

Using Make-the-Cut and Lettering Delights' LD Frightmares and DB Halloween Little Notes, I made a header for the calendar:

 By removing the outer pattern of the original frame image and joining the letters into it, I came up with these 3 layers. The base (green) layer was made by creating a shadow of the orange layer.

Here's a tip that you can use when you glue together letters or images with inside cuts like the letters "B" in the picture below. To more accurately glue the cutouts onto the layer, I place the letter "B" back into the header WITHOUT gluing the letter down. Using it as a template, I am able to position and glue the inside cuts. I remove the letter "B" when the inside pieces have been adhered to the orange layer.

I probably should have taken a picture at this point where I placed and glued down the inside black pieces while the letter "B" is still in position but I think you would get the idea.

Next, I used the witch's hat from the DB Boo Ya doodlebat font set and joined the image with numbers from LD Frightmares. After I have cut these numbered hats out, I "break" and delete the numbers and cut the hats again (with no numbers) to form the bases.

Here is the pile of hats waiting to be put together:

I adhered a small piece of adhesive-backed magnet to every hat and the header to make it stick to the magnetic calendar. Stickles never fail to make a cutout pop.

 Hello Spider!

 The web is also from DB Boo Ya while the spider is a Jolee sticker.

This is the calendar before I "dressed it up":

Here is the calendar with the new header and dates:

After making these magnet dates for the calendar, I don't think I can go back to just writing the dates on the board. These are definitely more fun than hand writing and to have the kids enjoy them is such a sweet bonus.

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We are just hours away from finding out the winner of the giveaway. Please check back at 10am PST, Oct 2 to see if you have won.